For he is not, by any stretch of the imagination, what you would expect to find as the executive chairman of a £767m group that runs top-secret projects such as the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston. But then Serco, the support-services group that takes public services private and has expanded exponentially from its defence-contract roots, is not much like other plcs anyway.

For a start, few would bundle together railways, prisons, hospitals, leisure centres and the odd bit of nuclear-missile work, but Serco does. And under Beeston’s watch, it appears now to be sloughing off its previously media-cautious approach. Last year it even had the first picture of its senior executive team in its annual report (buried at the back, surrounded